I’ll Untangle It For You

Psalm 50:15

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This past spring and summer my family and I started a new hobby. We’ve been doing a lot of fishing and I’ve discovered, as a father going fishing with small children, that it can be rather challenging because I don’t actually get to do a whole lot of fishing. What I end up doing is spending a lot of time fixing the tangled lines, trying to unhook fish that have swallowed the hook, tying new hooks onto the line. So it’s been teaching me a lot of patience.

The last time I was helping my son untangle this huge mess that had happened at the end of his pole with his fishing line. Untangling that, I was encouraging him please next time before trying to cast or before trying to fix it yourself. Just come to me and we can fix it very easily from the start. I’ll untangle it for you.

And it dawned on me that this is very much like our relationship with God. How often is it that we end up tangling the line of our lives? And we start tugging on it. We start pulling on it. We start whipping it around and before you know it it becomes just a massive huge mess. What a disaster.

What does God want from us? God would have us immediately come to him. In his Word he says in Psalm 50:15.

Call on me in the day of distress. I will deliver you, and you will honor me. (Psalm 50:15)

God has a loving gracious heart. When we begin to become tangled up in sin and as we’re tempted to only make things worse by forcing things and yanking and pulling and and having our own way with things God says: “No, no. Come to me, let me help you.” And he does help us. He helps us as he points us to the message of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ. Who went to the cross in order to free us from our sins. He announces to us your sins are forgiven. I have removed them from you as far as the East is from the West I have taken your sins, hurled them into the depths of the sea.

He helps us with that tangled mess that we have caused. How comforting that is. So when we find ourselves beginning to get in a situation where things are starting to get tangled up, we know where we can turn. God comes to us through His Word. He comes to us as we gather in his house. He points us back to our baptism and to the Lord’s Supper. And he says I am here for you. I forgive you your sins. Don’t let this mess tangle you up even more. I will forgive you.

Thanks be to God who invites us to come to him, who invites us to take our problems and our distresses to him and he promises to help us to untangle those things by forgiving us our sins. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for always being willing to help us even in spite of the messes that we have created for ourselves. Help us to always see how easy it is to come to you and to your fatherly heart and to trust that you will help us with this tangled mess that we create for ourselves. We thank you for this. We pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.

God’s blessings on your week.